They had on black cowboy hats whose broad brims had been tightly curled toward the sky. The couples follow one another in a slow circle around the packed dance floor.Ī couple wearing black Wranglers were hovering near the dance floor, both of them with a hand in the other's back pocket. Sometimes the dancers do a kind of Texas two-step, but more elaborate, like a waltz during other songs, one man wraps his right arm tightly around the waist of another, as if he were helping a friend off the field after an injury. Small groups of guys in spiny ostrich cowboy boots and tight Wranglers with ironed creases had gathered around the tables, but they were all looking at the dance floor. Seen from up above the dance pit, a sea of white cowboy hats was bobbing up and down in time to Spanish rock, cumbia, ranchera, norteña and drawn-out club versions of popular American hits.Īt even routine fiestas like this, it is an unspoken rule that a Mexican-even if he is in the United States-should obey his urge to offer up a grito, a tight, controlled ai-yai-eeee sound that erupted into the air here and there. The people in the dancing pit could have come straight out of an innocent hoedown in small-town Texas, except that all the dancers were Hispanic, male and dancing with each other. He looked toward the dance floor, sunken beneath the main floor.
introductions, Ignacio didn't offer a last name, but he did give several strident opinions that night, maybe because he was upset: Ignacio wasn't getting what he came for.
"It's not like these people are going to church tomorrow." He wanted it known that he usually would have been drunk by that time, but instead of boozy pronouncements, he offered a lucid conviction about Texas' 2 a.m. At closing time on a recent Saturday night, Ignacio leaned against the bar at Bamboleo's, a gay Latino club near Oak Lawn, satisfied that he'd snared one last beer before the cut-off.